MONETABRIEF – Sri Lanka's 13 billion rupee fraud at NDB Bank which had gone on for at least three years was revealed by a whistleblower just before 2025 accounts were signed off by auditors and management, according to proceedings of a parliament panel.

NDB staff involved with the fraud had also played musical chairs with the hole in the balance sheet, shunting it to various accounts before publication, the Committee on Public Finance was told.

The fraud involves some NDB staff linked to a unit where interbank transfers were made via LankaPay clearing system (Common Electronic Fund Transfer Switch), siphoned off money to other banks and concealed it by creating a fictitious asset account by the reporting date.

NDB Bank made a stock exchange filing on April 02, 2026 on the fraud, after making filing on March 27 saying the annual general meeting had approved all resolutions.

"This incident was whitleblown on March 26, 2026," Additional Director of the central bank's Department of Bank Supervision, Surekha Kekulawala told the Committee on Public Finance of the Parliament.

"The accounts were finalized and singed on 31 March 2026."

It was not clear whether she was referring to the 2025 accounts or the March 31, 2026 quarterly accounts. In Sri Lanka banks have a financial year ending in December, while most other companies report March 31 accounts.

The annual report with the December 2025 accounts was uploaded to the Colombo Stock Exchange website on March 04.

The auditors report from Ernst and Young saying the accounts gave a 'true and fair view' were signed on February 25.

However, auditors had highlighted a 12 billion rupees balance of the 'CEFT' account with an asterisk on the 2025 accounts, though they did not qualify or emphasize matters.

Central bank's bank supervisors told the COPF when they queried the numbers the staff who responded to them were also the same staff who had

Usually compliance and operational staff are expected to be separate.

Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe said on previous occasions the number had been hidden elsewhere.

Quarterly variations had come to the notice of Bank Supervision Department.

"Earlier year [it was] 3 billion and it has come down to 1 billion at some point," Governor Weerasinghe said.

"All of a sudden the end December one had shot up to 13 billion. That is where the concern was raised. Because of the colluded thing, they purposely sometimes hide the balances by parking those balances somewhere else, when it comes to publication.

"Unfortunately for those people who were involved, were not able to hide that 13 billion in the CEFT account. We found it later, at some point before publishing accounts they had been able to move these balances to park somewhere else."

The staff in the unit also had credentials of others to get into the IT system and there were also activity over weekends, it was mentioned.

COPF Chairman Harsha de Silva asked who was finally responsible and whether any actions would be taken for negligence.

Some of the money, which was taken out of other banks been then converted to cryptocurrency.

NDB said it was hiring crypto expertise to track down funds.